Nairi Coffee — Shop Updates: Building a Coffee Company From the Kitchen Counter

[DTX2023Tremor]

Figured I’d start a thread like Talon’s and show some of what goes on behind a small coffee company.

Quick intro: I’m Michael, I drive a Super Duty Tremor, and my wife Nune and I started Nairi Coffee at our own kitchen counter. I take a latte, She drinks it black, and for years we kept buying good beans and making mediocre cups.

Our shop doesn’t have a laser or a press brake. We are a member of a roasters collective, and as a collective we source, profile, and roast our coffee. What we build at home is everything around the bag: a quiz that matches you to a coffee you’ll actually like, a recipe for the brewer you own, and a system that sends the next bag as the last one runs low.

A lot of it got learned the hard way, so I’ll include the mistakes too.

Curious — what do you want to see in here?

 

[BLACKCHERRY]

Some are obsessive about their whiskey, I am obsessive about my coffee. I only drink black, prefer a medium roast and only source from small, local roasters. More than anything, i love hearing about people's passion, especially when it aligns with something I enjoy, but don't understand. I don't have any specific questions, but will be along for the ride in this thread to nerd out on everything you're willing to share!

 

[NEOHIO]

I enjoy coffee. I drink way too much everyday. A pot of drip in the AM before work, Brew a latte for the drive in, Finish that and have a few k-cups during the workday.

@DTX2023Tremor , How involved are you and Nune involved in the collective?
Do you assist in sourcing, profiling, roasting?
I think I read the collective is based out of CA?

What is your preferred method of coffee?
What grinder/Espresso maker do you use? Share some pics, we can all appreciate each others hobbies.
Have you experimented with the water quality/additives? Third wave enhancers etc.

 

[DTX2023Tremor]

I enjoy coffee. I drink way too much everyday. A pot of drip in the AM before work, Brew a latte for the drive in, Finish that and have a few k-cups during the workday.

@DTX2023Tremor , How involved are you and Nune involved in the collective?
Do you assist in sourcing, profiling, roasting?
I think I read the collective is based out of CA?

What is your preferred method of coffee?
What grinder/Espresso maker do you use? Share some pics, we can all appreciate each others hobbies.
Have you experimented with the water quality/additives? Third wave enhancers etc.

That’s a serious daily lineup, and exactly the kind of routine the sizing tool was built for. A morning pot of drip and a daily latte need two different grinds, so each one gets its own bag, sized and timed to how fast you go through it (unless you're grinding your own beans). The K-cups are the one part I can’t help with, since we don’t do pods.

On the collective, think of it like contract distilling. Plenty of well-loved bourbon comes out of MGP or Bardstown Bourbon Company, and the brand’s job is deciding what goes in the bottle. We wanted our coffee roasted in an FDA-registered facility, so rather than build one, we contracted with a roaster in Southern California (you read that right) to handle daily roasting and food-safety compliance. We are a member of a roasters collective, and that partnership is how we make sure every bag delivers a consistently good cup.

Our side of it is the palate work. Nune and I are SCA members working through our SCA certifications, and we’ve partnered with a certified sommelier who’s helping us cup our coffees. Cupping is the process that develops a coffee’s tasting notes, and that research feeds straight into our matching quiz and keeps improving it. I'll post something down the road on the cupping process as it is a fascinating and fun way to experience coffee. Long-term, we want to become Q Graders, the coffee world’s equivalent of a sommelier. Beyond that, we choose the coffees we carry, run the matching and the sizing, and write the brewing recipes, with each coffee’s page covering 14 brew methods.

Our daily driver is the AeroPress, with water from our home RO system and a Breville Smart Grinder Pro. We don’t make espresso often, but when we do it’s on a Flair - there's something to doing it old school with a manual press that I enjoy. There are about a dozen other brewers in the house for when the mood strikes: Vietnamese phin, cold brew, French press, drip and more. We even have a NitroPress for when we want to make nitrogen infused cold brew coffee (also works great for espresso martinis).

 

[NEOHIO]

I have a Gaggia Classic evo pro I use for our daily espressos. I also use an ECM Specialita grinder that only grinds for Espresso.
The drip pot is just some no name Keurig 2 in 1 machine. We have a 2 different subscriptions with Amazon. The drip is on a 3 week schedule. The whole beans are on an every 8 week. My wife started drinking daily latte's again, so that 8 weeks will get moved to something shorter soon.
We started out watching James Hoffmann on youtube. Once we talked ourselves into an Espresso machine, we started watching Whole Latte Love for gear recommendations. Our Gaggia is of the "boilergate" era. The original boiler lasted 30 months before it started leaking everywhere. It currently has a stock aluminum boiler on it, while we decide whether to offload this or invest into a higher end brewer.

 

[DTX2023Tremor]

I have a Gaggia Classic evo pro I use for our daily espressos. I also use an ECM Specialita grinder that only grinds for Espresso.
The drip pot is just some no name Keurig 2 in 1 machine. We have a 2 different subscriptions with Amazon. The drip is on a 3 week schedule. The whole beans are on an every 8 week. My wife started drinking daily latte's again, so that 8 weeks will get moved to something shorter soon.
We started out watching James Hoffmann on youtube. Once we talked ourselves into an Espresso machine, we started watching Whole Latte Love for gear recommendations. Our Gaggia is of the "boilergate" era. The original boiler lasted 30 months before it started leaking everywhere. It currently has a stock aluminum boiler on it, while we decide whether to offload this or invest into a higher end brewer.

You’re further down the rabbit hole than most. Hoffmann gets everyone interested in coffee eventually.

Before upgrading, I’d figure out what the Gaggia is actually costing you day to day. A few things to weigh:

• Workflow for milk drinks. With two lattes a day, the biggest gain from an upgrade isn’t the shot, it’s the workflow. The Classic is a single boiler: you pull the shot, wait for it to heat up for steam, then wait again for it to cool back down. A heat exchanger or dual boiler lets you brew and steam at the same time, and a dual boiler also holds brew temperature steadier.
• Temperature stability. Without a PID, the Classic’s temperature swings, so shot-to-shot consistency depends on technique (temperature surfing). Higher-end machines use PIDs and more thermal mass to hold temperature steady. That’s where most of the taste gain is.
• Pressure and flow control. Pre-infusion and flow control make shots more forgiving and open up lighter roasts. They’re nice to have, but less important for milk drinks.
• Water. Check the warranty’s water spec. Scale kills boilers, but pure RO can cause problems too: some machines’ level probes need a little mineral content to read, and very soft water can be hard on metal parts. Remineralizing RO water solves both, and that’s where products like Third Wave Water earn their keep.
• Power and space. On a standard 120V circuit, some dual boilers can’t heat both boilers at full power at once. Check the warm-up time too, and decide whether you want to plumb it in.
• Service. Buy from a dealer who repairs what they sell, which you’ve already found. Common designs like the E61 group have parts everywhere.

The cheaper path is a PID kit and a replacement boiler for the Classic; plenty of people run theirs for years. That won’t give you simultaneous brew and steam, though, so with two lattes a day I’d lean toward an HX or a dual boiler. Your grinder is already solid, so you’re set there whichever way you go. The beans matter as much as the machine, too: the best boiler in the world can’t rescue a coffee that doesn’t suit you.

 

[MrFancypants]

Our daily driver is the AeroPress, with water from our home RO system and a Breville Smart Grinder Pro. We don’t make espresso often, but when we do it’s on a Flair - there's something to doing it old school with a manual press that I enjoy. There are about a dozen other brewers in the house for when the mood strikes: Vietnamese phin, cold brew, French press, drip and more. We even have a NitroPress for when we want to make nitrogen infused cold brew coffee (also works great for espresso martinis).

Love our Breville Smart Grinder too. If flips easily between our Moccamaster and Breville Infuser grinds. The Infuser makes phenomenal espresso where you can fine tune extraction using the pressure gauge. Once you find the right grind and volume with your Smart Grinder, the whole process is extremely repeatable with a crazy amount of crema.

I had an AeroPress a long time ago but it just didn't satisfy, although I didn't have a great grinder way back then. At best it was a substitute for a one cup pour over. It sat unused for so long that when I went to try it again the rubber had started failing. Kind of ruined my respect for the brand. Now that hotel rooms no longer have shitty coffee makers, I should probably look into getting one again.

Anyway, love that you're into the roasting game. Will have to check out your site and support. We currently order 5 lb bags from Cutters Point and fill in the gap with Lavazza.

 

[NEOHIO]

We have run 100% distilled water since day 1. Water with Third Wave Water for espresso. We descale every 4th or 5th gallon. I was not impressed with the boiler being eaten away at the o-ring seal to the block.

 

[DTX2023Tremor]

Love our Breville Smart Grinder too. If flips easily between our Moccamaster and Breville Infuser grinds. The Infuser makes phenomenal espresso where you can fine tune extraction using the pressure gauge. Once you find the right grind and volume with your Smart Grinder, the whole process is extremely repeatable with a crazy amount of crema.

I had an AeroPress a long time ago but it just didn't satisfy, although I didn't have a great grinder way back then. At best it was a substitute for a one cup pour over. It sat unused for so long that when I went to try it again the rubber had started failing. Kind of ruined my respect for the brand. Now that hotel rooms no longer have shitty coffee makers, I should probably look into getting one again.

Anyway, love that you're into the roasting game. Will have to check out your site and support. We currently order 5 lb bags from Cutters Point and fill in the gap with Lavazza.

I totally get the AeroPress frustration. We ran the original for about 10 years and recently moved to the stainless steel version. We also have a Presston, which builds the inverted method right into the design, the way people brewed an AeroPress before the flow control cap came along. Honestly, that cap should come standard in the box.

We went deep down the rabbit hole on AeroPress competition recipes over the years. For us it lands somewhere between a French press and an Americano, and more importantly, it makes a consistent cup when we’re short on time getting out the door on a weekday. Weekends are when we slow down for methods that take more care and attention.

If you give it another shot, a good grinder makes a big difference, and replacement plunger seals are available if the old one is still kicking around. For hotel rooms, the AeroPress Go packs up pretty small.

We keep the AeroPress on our counter at home and the Presston travels with us anywhere we go, along with a small electric kettle so we can make coffee in the room. Nune's much happier when her day starts with a good cup of coffee and, happy wife = happy life. For the Moab meet-up and a recent group camping trip to Broken Bow, OK, we brought our drip machine and hotel style carafe to provide coffee for everyone (in addition to bourbon for the evenings).

 

[DTX2023Tremor]

Did you know that there’s a flavor wheel for coffee?

The whiskey folks in here probably know their flavor wheels, and wine people have one as well. Coffee has its own: the Coffee Taster’s Flavor Wheel, from the Specialty Coffee Association and World Coffee Research (attached). It’s the shared language tasters use to describe a cup.

It works from the middle out. The center holds the big, easy families: fruity, floral, sweet, nutty and cocoa, spice, roasted. Each ring out gets more specific. Fruity splits into berry, citrus and stone fruit; berry splits into blackberry, raspberry and blueberry. You go out as far as you comfortably can, and stopping at “fruity” is a perfectly good answer.

Two things about it stuck with us when we started building Nairi.

• The words are all food and everyday smells: berry, caramel, cinnamon, smoke, cedar. Nobody needs coffee vocabulary to use it, because the reference points are things you’ve already eaten and smelled.
• The edges are where the problems live. There’s a green, vegetal zone and a sour, fermented zone, and those notes usually mean underripe or badly processed coffee. That’s a big part of what specialty grading screens out.
  

That first point is the whole idea behind our quiz. If coffee flavor is described in food words, then the foods and smells you already love should tell us which coffees you’ll love. Next update I’ll get into the science of why that works, and where it doesn’t.

The longer version is on our blog, under Learn.

Anyone here actually use a whiskey or wine wheel, or do you just know what you like?